But your editor is convinced that the main problem is not OpenSSL. It is not
Free Software. It is about companies not taking responsibilities and about
missing economic incentives to ensure security. Security expert Bruce
Schneier wrote in 2006:

"We generally think of computer security as a problem of
technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives:
The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of
failure."

In a nutshell, if your private data is exposed because your health
insurance, where it is stored, did not take care to secure it, you suffer to a
much higher degree than the health insurance does! You are in no position to
pressure the health insurance to change its level of security, and they have no
economic incentive to do so. In the article Schneier further explains that the
liability for attacks is diffuse and that "the economic considerations of
security are more important than the technical considerations".

Following the argument, the important question we face is, how can we give
the right economic incentives to ensure that: security relevant software has
the proper funding; third parties are auditing code; more people are trained in
computer security; programmers have time for maintenance and are not forced to
just develop new features; we have a diversity
of software for different special purposes and therefor prevent software
monocultures; companies run secure software instead of just giving people a
good feeling by performing a security theatre or by delegating responsibility
to others (for example the government), so they can be blamed if there is a
problem, and that also the security interest of private users is fulfilled and
not just those of big cooperations.

In the FSFE we thought about how to give good economic incentives for Free
Software development from the beginning, and now we have to think more about
economic incentives to increase security. It is a difficult area, so we are
looking forward to your comments on this topic and invite you to discuss it on our public mailing
lists.

Internet Censorship and Open Standards

Local elections scheduled across the country for the following day, the
government blocking both YouTube and Twitter, and the usage numbers of the Free
Software anonymity software Tor doubling during the week. Is there a better
time for the FSFE's President to go to this country? At the annual conference
of the Turkish GNU/Linux Users Association in Istanbul Karsten Gerloff talked
about the relationship between technology and power, and made it to the front
page of a national newspaper by mentioning who sold the software to block the
internet. Karsten wrote a
summary of his talk and his journey in his blog.

The talk would not have happened without our Turkish volunteer Nermin Canik,
who encouraged us to attend the conference. Nermin has been working steadily
and reliably as a volunteer for a couple of years now. Together with other
volunteers she organised Document Freedom Day
(DFD) events in Turkey. This year, although as mentioned above it was a hard
time for people in Turkey who care about freedom, they accomplished 7 events in
Istanbul, Ankara, Çayırova, Denizli, and Adana.

Have a look at the Document
Freedom Day 2014 Report to find out what happened in Turkey and around the
world during that day. The report includes lots of pictures ranging from
children celebrating DFD at school, the new leaflets, comic, and t-shirts, as
well as the very delicious looking cakes. Thanks to our Turkish translator
Tahir Emre and our leaving intern Matti Lammi the report and the whole DFD
website are also available in Turkish and Finnish.

143 of the politicians newly elected in France's municipal elections have
pledged their support for Free Software. They all signed
the Free Software Pact by the French Free Software organisation April. The
FSFE congratulates them for the good job. Please notice that this month's "Get Active"
item, always at the end of the newsletter, is also about the Free Software
Pact and how you can help us.

Ghostery is an browser extension supposed to help users against tracking
and surveillance on the web. But as Hugo Roy
reports, the problem is that Ghostery is not released as Free
Software.

Guido Günther reports from the
7th Debian groupware meeting at the Linuxhotel including why the
participants, of whom all but one are FSFE Fellows, took the decision to remove
iceowl (calendar) or what they did with icedove (e-mail).

Get active: Make the Free Software Pact a success!

As we wrote in March,
candidates pledging for Free Software is a good way to take them at their word
after an election. In Future we can contact them whenever there will be EU
legislation to be passed that might endanger the existence or growth of Free
Software.

After FSFE's volunteers did a lot of translations for the pact, April now
published all necessary information on the Free Software pact website so you can
get active.

In Italy our new intern Michele Marrali already contacted 51 candidates. He
searched for the candidates, used Erik's
template (also available
in German) to contact them, and afterwards noted on our pad
whom he already contacted. His goal is to contact every Italian candidate
and get them to sign the pact. So how many can you contact?

Donaţii

The Free Software Foundation Europe is a non-profit non-governmental
organisation. Our work is made
possible by a community of
volunteers,
Fellows and
donors. Your donations are critical to our
strength and autonomy. They enable us to continue working for Free
Software wherever necessary, and to be an independent voice.